Balibar and the Citizen Subject

Etienne Balibar is a French philosopher and Distinguished Professor of French and Italian and of Comparative Literature at the University of California Irvine. These 10 essays introduce the key concepts in Balibar's thought, particularly his idea of the citizen/subject, through which he reads the political history of Europe.

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This collection explores Balibar's rethinking of the connections between subjection and subjectivity by tracing the genealogies of these concepts in their discursive history. The 12 essays provide an overview of Balibar's work after his collaboration with Althusser. They explain and expand his framework; in particular, by restoring Arabic and Islamic thought to the conversation on the citizen subject. The collection includes two previously untranslated essays by Balibar himself on Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes.